MECHANISMS OF NATIONAL MEMORY CONSTRUCTION THROUGH MASS COMMUNICATIONS
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.32689/maup.philol.2026.1.2Keywords:
advertising, memory culture, memorialization, Russian-Ukrainian war, public memory, memory communication, local initiatives, PR, PESO modelAbstract
This article examines the culture of memory and the memorialization of the Russian-Ukrainian war as key processes shaping contemporary national memory culture in the context of a prolonged armed conflict. The full-scale war has highlighted the need for personalized, ethical, and communicatively considered forms of commemorating fallen soldiers – forms that go beyond traditional state memorial practices and are actively unfolding in family, local, media, and digital spaces. The article aims to define the role and mechanisms by which advertising and PR technologies shape the construction of a national memory culture, and to justify the application of the PESO model as a method for shaping memorial practices in the contemporary media environment. The research methodology draws on theoretical generalization and systematization, a rhetorical approach, comparative analysis, and conceptual modeling. The study establishes that advertising and PR serve as the primary channels through which memorial meanings acquire public form, become embedded in media, and influence the formation of national identity – while remaining vulnerable to instrumentalization, manipulation, and the commercialization of traumatic experience. It is also shown that the rhetorical approach and the concept of memory politics reveal public memory as a space of competing narratives and actors, in which various groups – the state, media, cultural institutions, civic initiatives, and the families of the fallen – mutually shape or contest dominant interpretations of the war. The PESO communication model is substantiated and proposed as a system of interacting channels and practices for developing a comprehensive public memory program addressing the war and those who died in it. Promising directions for future research include: the study of ethical standards in memorial communications across media and social networks; the development of quality criteria for memory representation; and the analysis of the long-term impact of various memorialization formats on social cohesion and the transmission of values to future generations
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